Electronic imaging devices such as digital cameras are used in a wide range of applications and are steadily becoming less expensive and simpler to use. Electronic images have many advantages over film-based images that are causing the use of electronic imaging devices to rapidly increase. Electronic images may be stored indefinitely without the image degradation suffered by film-based images. Electronic imaging devices generate images that can be viewed immediately and used in a variety of ways such as printing, posting to a web page on the World Wide Web, transmitting to others by electronic mail (email) or other means, etc. They can also rapidly capture large numbers of images that can be previewed and stored or deleted as desired. As the capacity of removable solid-state memories has increased and price has gone down, typical electronic imaging devices can now capture and store hundreds of electronic images.
Electronic imaging devices typically include a processor of some type to execute programs to provide a user interface, control the functions of the device, perform image processing, etc. However, as with conventional general purpose computers, it can take an undesirable amount of time to initialize or boot the electronic imaging device. When the electronic imaging device is turned on, initialization programs are executed to test the systems in the electronic imaging device, load the user interface, configure the electronic imaging device in a default mode, etc. The delay when an electronic imaging device is initializing can be particularly troublesome because a user has often turned on the electronic imaging device in an attempt to capture an image before the scene changes. If the initialization time is too long, the user may miss the opportunity to capture the desired image.